Days 24, 25 & 26 - Dunkirk

Well, that’s the last Nutella waffle, the last ice-cream,the last bike ride (and so on) of the holiday after four weeks of traveling. For our last stop, we’ve had three nights just outside Dunkirk, barely a stone’s throw from our last stop at Bruges. We’ve had a couple of bike rides to Dunkirk and along the sea front at Malo-les-Bains, epicenter of the Operation Dynamo evacuation in 1940. The museum was well worth a visit, but other than that it’s been a bit disappointing given the historical significance of the place.  Otherwise, it’s been a fairly chilled and  lazy 3 days with lots of sleeping and reading. Tomorrow we have a ferry from Calais, just an hour away and get back to Dover just after 11am, ready for the drive home.

Final thoughts, reflections and bits of useless information, in no particular order. We’ve cycled about 320 miles and driven about 2000 miles, visited seven countries and stayed at 11 different locations. We’ve had one minor bike mishap, down to me allowing my bike to fall over onto the derailleur right at the end of the holiday. The motorhome has been well behaved other than a temporary engine management light. Favourite places were probably Bruges, Interlaken and Lake Konstanz. Most expensive was Switzerland and cheapest was Netherlands. There seemed little correlation between amount paid and quality of facilities. WiFi was generally rubbish other than Liechtenstein. We’ve used about  10GB of roaming data between us on mobile phones and by the miracle of Google Meet, I’ve been able to deliver 4 A-level Maths tuition sessions remotely. Best cakes were in Marnay (France). Totally predictably, we’ve consumed far too many calories in various forms. Enduring memory is of cycling in lots of places where being a cyclist is the norm rather than feeling like an alien. Relatively new experience has been cycling in normal clothes rather than lycra, everywhere  great cycling infrastructure and we’ve realised that you can do at least 20 miles cycling without padded shorts.

If there’s anyone out there, we hope you’ve found it interesting and look forward to hearing from you in the future.

Martin and Lesley